400,000 People Landed on FBI's Terrorism 'Watch-List'?

Posted by Steven D., Booman Tribune at 9:30 AM on November 2, 2009.

The FBI has a Terror Watch List of 400,000 names on it. Does that seem extreme to you? Because it seems absolutely insane to me.

Newly released FBI data offer evidence of the broad scope and complexity of the nation's terrorist watch list, documenting a daily flood of names nominated for inclusion to the controversial list.

During a 12-month period ended in March this year, for example, the U.S. intelligence community suggested on a daily basis that 1,600 people qualified for the list because they presented a "reasonable suspicion," according to data provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the FBI in September and made public last week. [...]

The ever-churning list is said to contain more than 400,000 unique names and over 1 million entries. The committee was told that over that same period, officials asked each day that 600 names be removed and 4,800 records be modified. Fewer than 5 percent of the people on the list are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. Nine percent of those on the terrorism list, the FBI said, are also on the government's "no fly" list.

I have to wonder if we are slowing turning our "security forces" into the equivalent of East Germany's notorious Stasi where everyone informs on everyone else and thee FBI keeps a record on everyone for any possible "anti-government" comment or association.

I can't even see the value of a list that large. All it does is make it harder to spot and investigate the real terror suspects from the mass of innocent people who likely will never commit a crime (outside a traffic offense), much less an act of terror. Once a list of this size is compiled, however, it takes on a life of its own. I strongly suspect that a list this large has little value as an investigative tool. What it does represent, however is far more ominous: a centralized state security apparatus that cannot stop itself from intruding into every aspect of our lives. As with the data bases compiled by the Pentagon and the NSA, this is just another sign that our fear of terrorism has allowed the Constitution to be gutted like a dead fish.

Hey, isn't that what all you tea-baggers complain about? Losing your freedoms? Well people, when the FBI can add names to a terror watgh list willy-nilly with little if any oversight, when the NSA can read all your emails and text messages, when the Pentagon keeps a data base of Vegan groups and Quakers, don't you think we've crossed a line. Maybe you could show some common cause with us on the left and start demanding our government dial back its absurd attempts to catalog every piece of information about everyone. After all, there's a scary Democrat as the head of the executive branch. I for one don't think it matters much which party heads up the federal government, if the security apparatus of that government gathers and controls all this information and assigns people to "terror lists" under cover of secrecy and national security. This ought to be a concern for every American, regardless of political affiliation.

Because, political parties come and go, but security forces, the people we don't vote into office, never die. Maybe we all ought to spend some time figuring out what they have been doing this last decade, and trimming their powers and limiting their activities. Unless you really do want to wake up someday with a police state. Trust me, Left or Right makes no difference if that is the end result.

Tagged as: terrorism, fbi, watch-list